The Life and Times of Paul Atarison
by SaintDwyn
Summary: This is the story of a Pong Ball's life. This is my first attempt. Be kind.
1. Chapter 0: Why I'm Writing

**Disclaimer: **Pong is the property of Atari, and any other computer games I choose to mention are the property of other people, who I will add as I go along. I do not own Mortal Kombat II. I do not own Sega. I do not own Tetris. I do not own Nintendo. I do not own Bomberman. I do not own Super Mario Land. I do not own Donkey Kong.

**Chapter 0 **

You, the people of the OutScreen; you, whose systems of communication are constructed of words and not of numbers, waves and beeps; you, who become joyous, angered, and occasionally sad because of our people, the people of the Screen, (or, Screeners,) have a word that I cannot comprehend the meaning of. The word is 'forget'. I, a Screener, an invention of you, the people of the OutScreen, have been programmed never to forget. Other Screeners have told me of an unnatural process called a 'memory dump', and there is a recurrent debate over a process of rebirth called the 'recycle bin'. Yet I have never been dumped or recycled, and possess what many of you would call the memory of an elephant. Having once been a component of an elephant who was recycled, I should say that your views on such things are more than a little inaccurate.

The point of this is that I have a perfect memory. It would be possible for me to tell you my entire life had I enough time to transcribe it. However, I have no intention of doing this. My intention, rather, is to tell you the story of my unique life as a Screener, to enlighten you, the people of the OutScreen, as to the world that you constantly view, but never seem to understand. I have read many of your books, and am greatly interested in you; an interest that many of the Screener's would look down upon; but I want you to understand my world and I, as much as you do your world and you.

With this in mind, I begin.


	2. Chapter 1: Pong

Chapter 1: Pong 

It is my understanding that human beings, when they are born, are given a name, and this name stays with them for the rest of their life. I was not given a name, and so have been assigned and chosen various appellations throughout my life. Which do you think is better – to have one identity from birth until death, or to be able to change it as you please, able to deny your wrongs and be telling the truth? I prefer the latter. I think it is my nature to go back and forth.

From here on in you can call me Paul. It's an abbreviation of 'Pong' and 'Ball', but it also means 'small', so I find it quite appropriate for me. On one occasion, I was told that I also have to have a surname, so because the first Pong Ball was invented by the Atari Company, I have chosen 'Atarison'. I am called Paul Atarison. This name I have acquired seems to make me almost an OutScreener.

But why do I not have a name? Well, I do not have a name because I do not have any parents; or, I do, but I have never seen them. Maybe it would be advantageous to tell you how a Pong Ball is born.

When a Pong Ball leaves the screen, they do not reappear at the centre again. Many of you seem to feel that this is what happens, but I assure you it is an illusion caused by your being OutScreeners. What we actually do is enter a world inaccessible to OutScreeners. Depending on which side of the screen we are flung off, we may enter Lepoland or the Unknown. Each of the paddles to the left of the screen guard a world known as Lepoland, where Pong Ball's are forced to try and survive in other computer games. If they succeed, they are put into another game of Pong, where they are given the opportunity to enter the Unknown, which is guarded by the paddle to the right. Beyond this boundary lies the explanation of a Pong Ball's birth, the purpose of our lives. But, as the end of our life is the beginning of another's, I shall not risk telling you the whole story of my beginning until the end, because I did not discover all the facts until the end. Let us begin with what happened to me.

I did not begin my life in an arcade machine like my heroic ancestors: nor was I downloaded as a flash game onto a PC like the hedonistic youths of today. I am one of those elite Pong Balls, who began life on 'Mortal Kombat II' for the Sega Mega Drive. I don't know if you are aware of this, but if you play a large amount of two player games and the first player wins each time, then you are rewarded with a single game of Pong. While most of the people who achieved this – those who call themselves 'gamers' on your side of the Screen – are doing it to see if it works, the two who released me into the world were not. They were both considerably stoned, and one of them was determined that he would eventually beat the other. When Rayden Paddle, Mileena Paddle and I appeared, each of the gamers thought they were hallucinating us. It was because of their intoxicated surprise that I have never been hit by a Paddle, and so do not wish them any ill, as many of my brethren do.

So, I quickly departed the screen of my birth and entered the first of my transitions. How can I describe the glory of this transition to you in your language, without the aid of beeps and waves? What words have you to suit it? I know of none, and that is probably because you have not experienced it. I suppose your phrase 'Super Highway', although you use it for the Internet, seems an apt paradigm. It is rather like watching a thousand colours ruch past you in a blur, except I do not wish to use the word blur because I can remember every single colour and every single shape that passed me. It is like watching a defined blur pass you, I suppose, although I am fully aware that those two words seem to cancel each other out.

And so I entered a new game, Tetris.


	3. Chapter 2: Tetris

The first thing I remember is the music. It was the first time I had ever heard music, and the vibrations of those pure sounds gave me a feeling of being lifted up to somewhere, being somewhere higher than I had ever been before. I am not aware if OutScreeners remember the first time they hear music, but it has come to my attention that you do not remember much of your youth, so i suspect that most of you do not. With me though, whenever i hear the music from Tetris, I feel calm and relaxed and want to huddle up beside an arrangement of blocks.

The second thing i became aware of was what surrounded me. I was inside the body of a Tetris block, and it made him/her ill. (From now on I shall call it a 'him' because he was a grumpy and slovenly fellow.)

'Eurgh, what's inside me?'

Another, kinder, gentler tetris block who was attached to the falling square of four blocks replied to him.

'Woah, you've got a Pong Ball inside you! I've always wanted a Pong Ball inside me! What's it feel like?'

'Uncomfortable.'

'I've heard stories of this before. Blocks end up with Pong Ball's inside them, and it's up to he Pong Ball to survive before he can reach his salvation. There's a whole massive history of it.'

'What do you mean survive?'

'Well, when you die, you reappear as a block at the top of the screen don't you?'

'Yes.'

'Well, that's not what happens with Pong Balls, they have to survive in other computer games and then return to their own. They're very primitive, quite a few pixels away from our stage of evolution.'

The third block now said in a low voice

'You're in grave trouble.'

'Why?'

'If that Pong Ball doesn't survive, then neither will you.'

The four blocks and I hit a whole community of blocks at this point, thudding onto irritated neigbours whose electromagnetic voices drowned each other's out. i could just about still hear the conversation of my birthblock, but could not understand any of it. It was not until recently that i have been able to translate the music of beeps and waves that it appeared to me into something comprehensible. I was, however, entirely aware that there was tension between the four. My possessor was obviously angry. The historian's mood had changed from glee to regret. The informative third block was sombre all through. The fourth block was asleep.

Luckily enough, the gamer was tired and unable to play against the increasing speed of the game. He was a young boy, about fifteen, wearing a Thunderbird 2 cardigan that his grandma had knitted from him. I would see him again, later in life, without the cardigan. But, for the moment, my life was not at risk.

As the four blocks and I sat four rows up from the bottom of the screen, the historian taught me to speak functionally. Not subject, verb, object, but the Screener's equivalent. 'I am a Pong Ball', 'I must survive', 'I will die unless...'

That word, unless, was where the historian's problem. She wanted to help me in case I came across any problems on my travels, but, given the limited period of time she had to teach me, could not decide which perils it was best to warn me against. Should she tell me about the possibility of exploding in Bomberman? Should she tell me what to do if I was caught in Super Mario Land? She realised that the more time she spent thinking about what she could teach me, the less time she had to teach, and so quickly decided to teach me how to avoid general obstacles in computer games. 'I will die unless...

'...you stop me from falling.'

'...you stop me from exploding.'

'...you stop me from being shot.'

This was all happening while the OutScreener was trying desperately to combat the blocks at the top of the screen. Those three instructions were the only ones she gave me before the OutScreener finally lost the struggle. I then dissappeared, never to see the block I inhabited again, except in my infinite memory; and never to see that kind and helpful historian block again, although I hope she lives on, or, if not, that she lived a happy life.

With only the three phrases that she had taught me to use as instruments of survival, i hoped that the next game I entered would involve falling, exploding or being shot.


	4. Chapter 3: Donkey Kong

**Chapter 3: Donkey Kong**

Of course, I reappeared in another game of Pong. This time it was on an arcade machine. There was a different type of music for me to listen to there, one of what i now understand to be overlapping layers of dialogue and frustrated monologue, but one that I believed at the time was something I would learn to interpret. Eventually, I did learn to interpret it, as you know. Most Pong Balls, however, do not learn it. It was also the first time I saw more than two people in front of me. You would probably find it difficult to concentrate on fifty people at the same time, but I have no difficulty in doing so. If I wished, I could describe every intricate detail of the multicoloured bag on the shoulder of a girl at the counter. I could describe every hair of her abundant locks. I could describe the backs of five boys dressed in slightly different shades of black gathered round one machine that was visible to me in the gap between his arm and his torso. If there were a painter dedicated enough, I believe he could recreate the exact picture in my memory.

You may have noticed that I did not reappear in another Pong game in Mortal Kombat II. We Pong Balls are born travellers, and where we were born has little relevance to how we develop. Despite the location of my birthscreen, I have never returned to such a place, and spent most of this half of my childhood in arcade machines, watching sweaty teenagers battle for their dignity in amusement halls. To have been in non-existence until another Mortal Kombat II Pong Ball game became available would have been like experiencing death. Non-existence in the world of the Screen is equivalent to death. If you have ever destroyed a computer game, I do not think I can forgive you. If you have an old games machine gathering dust in the attic, or the basement, or wherever you have left it, root it out again and play it. You will not believe how well it will play, the Screeners will be so happy to have resurfaced into existence that they will be the liveliest people you have ever seen.

I'm still proud I came from Mortal Kombat II though, still proud of my relative individuality in a world of particularly similar Pong Balls, still what you, the people of the OutScreen, would probably call patriotic.

The game did not last very long. I was young and uneducated, ignorant of any need but that of survival. I knew nothing of which side of the screen I should bid for, but, knowing that I had been in a similar place before, and that I would not die, I drifted off to the left. There, the paddle attempted to intercept my path. I merely screamed:

'I will die unless you stop me from exploding!'

This made him laugh. Indeed, such an unlikely proposition made him laugh so much that it rendered him unable to move. I could only thank the gentle historian block for inadvertently helping me.

Another game that involved falling was to be my next stop in Lepoland. I was encased in a barrel at the top of the screen in the original Donkey Kong. It was my first encounter with the Princess, Mario and Donkey Kong. I was not present for donkey kong's bending of red girders, nor the small piece of music in the background when the words 'How high can you get?' appeared beneath an angry, and more orangey donkey kong. It was only as the first stage of the first level began that I appeared on the screen, when the action was about to take place. I was placed in a barrel in the top left corner.

It would be interesting to hear from you, the OutScreeners, whether you think the orange and yellow barrels that Donkey Kong throws are the same as those which are stacked two two by two in the top left corner. From your perspective, it does not appear to be so. This is, I think, because you, the OutScreeners, were not made by somebody it was possible to see, and so have no context to understand the crazy transitions that occur which we are so aware of. How can I explain it to you? If there is a path that you frequently walk down, there may have been one occasion when you noticed your surroundings and were surprised how quickly you had progressed since the last time you noticed them. There is a glitch in your system, like there is in ours. The two differences between what i have described to you and what it is like for us are that we have a reasonable knowledge of when to expect it, and it is also painful. I must stress that although your early programmers were trying hard to make existence comfortable for us, they failed to realise that they should have had sympathy with us. We do not like being jerked around in such a way, anymore then you would falling asleep in bed and then waking up standing in a queue. Fortunately, you have got a lot better at making our continuity seamless, and out lives have developed from awkward hellish pain, into something that I could only describe as reasonable and functional, until now it is almost luxurious. Some of the younger Screeners would not know good programming if they were made by it, (and the probably were,) but I truly appreciate the miraculous speed of your advances.

To the game. The barrel I was within this time did not think it too painful, but rather said he had a little bit of an itch inside him, and i told him:

'I will die unless you stop me from falling!'

All the other stationary barrels looked at him as though they were his words. He tried to suggest it was not him, and so they looked up at the Princess, but she was too busy acting the drama queen and trying to be a damsel in distress for Mario, and then they looked at Donkey Kong, but he was too busy growling, and they knew it could be neither of them.

'I didn't say that guys.'

'Have you got a bug, Ralph?' said the bottom-right barrel.

'No, but I do have a funny feeling in my stomach, like its just about to explode. I will die unless you stop me from exploding! I didn't say that guys, i mean, i know it came from me, but i swear i didn't say that.'

The bottom-right barrel, who had shown the most pity for my barrel's state was the first to be thrown down after the navy and sky blue striped barrel that was thrown toward the running Mario.

'Ralph,' said the bottom left barrel, 'I think you may have one of those things that the people of the OutScreen keep talking about, what's it called, it's like a split something...'

'It's not called "split" anything, its called "schizophrenia".'

'Schizophrenia! Schizophrenia!' I shouted, because there was no equivalent 'word' in the world of the Screeners, and though i had witnessed OutScreener dialects before, it was as alien to me as if you were to hear one of your closest friends begin to start talking like the wind, or putting on an accent for the gentle rustling of a tree.

Suddenly, the barrel I inhabited was thrown down, and I was clattered and banged inside without much care because the barrel did not know that I was even in the game. We rolled across the descending girder and down ladders, and when it came to a point where the barrel seemed to wish to roll down a ladder that Mario was climbing up, I put a stop to it by pushing him beyond, and thereby saving Mario and myself, which, upon reflection, i can deem an almost heroic act.

I rolled passed the burning can of oil and out of the barrel, into the next game.


End file.
